


You Are Always in The Corner of My Mind

by Lishalalalalala



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brotherhood, Brotherly Love, Dean Winchester is Sam Winchester's Parent, Gen, People would probably punch me in the face if I tag this as angst and fluff, Protective Dean Winchester, So much angst, Whump, angst and fluff...?, character death but not really, cuddling (for like 3 seconds maybe), doesn't get whumper than this, no editing we die like the winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28384719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lishalalalalala/pseuds/Lishalalalalala
Summary: In the bizarreness of it, the effect of shellshock, a morbid part of his mind remembered Stanford and was almost inclined to let out a laugh: you thought that was going to be the worst night of your life.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Kudos: 13





	You Are Always in The Corner of My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> I still think about Dean and what did he do before selling his soul, the first time Sam died. 
> 
> Unedited, probably has lots of errors but welp.

He’d thought about this moment before, you know. He did, particles of consciousness wandering into forbidden territories on the way to hunts; some nice, innocent afternoon, bathed in lazy sunlight; waking up at midnight, jerking his head out of a nightmare, a scream thick and cold in his throat. 

It’s hunting. It’s a hunter’s life. Wasn’t like mortality was the last in a pile of neatly stacked cards, behind retirement and pension and going fishing by the lake every Sunday. Mortality is the thing that you bump into at the turn of next corner. Maybe not this one, the next one then, and the next one, and the next one, or the next one. 

And so he’d thought about it. 

And so he’d imagined it. 

Some ones are better than the rest, blaze of glory, Butch and Sundance, a blast of fire and down falls the monster, he shares one last cocky grin with his brother before darkness swallows him up. In the rest of them, he tries to stop it, but he misses the shot and he was too slow or too fast or that one inch too much to the right and oh god Sam. 

It was the thing that pushes him to field stripe every gun before and after each hunt, to jump higher and train harder and hangs on tighter, one day at a time.

It was the thing that keeps him drowned in a bottle of whiskey, flashes strangers a smile that feels like too tight plastic over his face with a wink tacked to the end, whispers tales of self-hatred and desperation to him in the dead of night.

It was the thing that was almost relieved to see Sam go, teenage dreams and eighteen years of his life packed into a worn-out duffle bag, and he finds out that bitterness sounded like “so that’s all the worth of this family to you”.

It was the thing that was horrified to see Sam go, because he doesn’t know the monsters that would linger under his baby brother’s bed, thousands of miles away. Palo Alto is too big a place, so much bigger than a dingy motel room and fortress made of stained pillowed and scratchy blankets and pizza nights and piggy backs and he can’t protect Sam from a world beyond that. 

When did the world become bigger than that? 

When did Sam start to want something bigger than that? 

In the bizarreness of it, the effect of shellshock, a morbid part of his mind remembered Stanford and was almost inclined to let out a laugh: you thought that was going to be the worst night of your life. 

You thought it was going to be despair and chagrin, reckless hunts and no strings attached sex from then on, the rest of your life spent at the bottom of an endless array of bottles. 

He’d let the promise of a future made of better things lure him into knocking on Sam’s door. He’d stood there for hours and when he finally decided to summon enough courage to lift up his arm, he’d thought “come on coward, how bad could it be?”

The universe must have heard him. 

The universe answered. 

He thought, he believed, he understood it all, the forever imminent mortality of a hunter’s life. He thought he’d done the measuring and math, greater goods and bigger cause and he thought he’d convinced himself that this is his life, this is what he wanted and he’s ready and prepared for it. 

Midway through his sprint, two seconds before his legs buckled and the world toppled, he’d thought nah.

Nah. 

What is this, some kid, looked like he couldn’t have been much older than Sam, with a dagger in his hand? 

This is what the end of the world will look like to Dean? 

Nah.

So he continues running until his knees hit dirt and his arms circle around Sam, and there is an litany of “nononononono” going on in half of his brain, because the other one is sluggish, refusing to move past the “nah it couldn’t be”. 

He knows his lips are moving, offering up decade old reassurances, he thinks “Sam’s fine”, probably doesn’t even need all these theatrics, probably won’t even need a hospital. Part of Dean almost wants to tease him a little, you are OK you big drama queen, you are going to live.

He doesn’t know why his heart sputters to a stop at the last word and he feels like blood has burst out from the veins and is now loose and roaring inside his body. He sees Bobby taking off after the boy and thinks good, I can help Sam to the car myself.

He sees it, so vividly, the ride back to Bobby, getting Sam into the house, the weight of little brother leaning heavily on his shoulder, patches and bandages and painkillers, lots of liquids and rest. He smiles to himself at the memory of a doped-up Sam. Cute kid, he’d always been a cute kid. Trailing after Dean, puppy brown eyes and grabby hands, staring at him through a tuft of soft hair. Dad said he was worried that Sam would never learn how to walk because Dean never put him down, but his little brother had turned out perfectly fine, long legs carrying him away from home, barely on the tusk of becoming a man. But he wasn’t. He isn’t. Sam is just a kid and he’s right. This hunting life, it’s not fair. They are taking a break after this one, fixing up cars and movie marathons.  
Maybe he could even convince Bobby to drive to town and go to one of those fancy grocery stores to pick up some overly priced cereals. Sam had loved Lucky Charms but what if he’d outgrown those in Stanford? He would buy new cereals for Sam to try. 

There are so many things in life that he wants for Sam to try. 

He doesn’t know why he is thinking about retirement and leaving everything behind and why he is seeing each and every moment of Sam Sam Sam flashing past his eyes, all twenty-four years of it (too young too short why is the blood not stopping it should be stopping now).

He feels Sam’s head lolling, like it’s suddenly too heavy for his neck, but that’s OK because Dean is right there, and he holds up the face of a little brother that is too young, way too young, and he thinks it doesn’t make sense. There were no monsters, no ghouls or ghosts, wendigos or shapeshifters. He’d even already seen Sam before it happend. He was limping towards Dean, injured but upright, one hand holding a shoulder and a smile on his face that’s all sunshine and relief and you came you came you are the first one today Dean I drew a picture in class it’s you and Daddy and me but look you are right next to me Dean. 

It doesn’t make sense. It was just another kid. It was just a blade. 

He’d moved his hand once to peek at it, to squelch the screaming inside his head that won’t shut up, he tells himself, then he presses his palm back over the incision, refusing to think about the amount of blood and the location of the injury. There are weird ass cases all the time. Heck, that’s what they made a living out of, but Dean’s thinking about different sort of weird and different sort of cases, like a guy that gets run over by a semi but walked away with only scratches or a teen that got saved from a bullet by a huge textbook. The blade could have missed all the organs and sure there is blood loss and Sammy is passing out from that, but it’s not that bad. 

Or maybe, maybe Sam’s different, with all his visions and telekinesis and freak abilities. Like that time he moved a cabinet with his mind. That was a new one but he did it, when he thought he needed to save Dean. They didn’t know he could but he did it to save Dean. Healing is a new one too, sewing up inner muscles and regenerating blood cells, but he could maybe do it. 

He’d do it for Dean, right?  
But Sam’s not responding. He’s probably tired, too tired to open his mouth or to make a sound. Or he’s ignoring Dean. And that is fine and alright by itself. When they were kids, sometimes Sam would get mad at him and he’d refuse to talk to his big brother. He deserves it this time. He really did. He shouldn’t have taken that long to get here, shouldn’t have sent Sam into the diner alone, shouldn’t have made that stupid promise in that small Connecticut inn, he shouldn’t have embarrassed Sam with the doll prank, shouldn’t have put itching powders in his clothes and spoon in his mouth and nair in his shampoo when they were 13 and 9, he shouldn’t have yelled at him and punched him and told him Dad’s last words, he shouldn’t have stayed in the bar with Gordon while Sam walked to the motel all by himself, shouldn’t have called him Sammy when he didn’t want Dean to, shouldn’t have blasted his music too loud and eaten poutine on Sam’s bed and he shouldn’t have went to Stanford that night and raised his damn hand to knock on that damn door.

Dean’s sorry. He is so sorry. And if only Sam would open his eyes and look at him and he would understand and then maybe they could go back to talking again, the two of them and the Impala, cruising the backroads and braving greasy diner food. He needs to look at him. Sam would wake up. He’d come every time Dean called. When Sam was 12 he went to a Halloween party, and his friends had told Dean that he wasn’t there when he went to pick Sammy up. It had taken him hours, frantically searching, yelling himself hoarse from the suburban area to the backwoods. He was going to tear Sam a new one when he found him, but one look from those big damp eyes and he was putting his jacket on Sam and telling him to never do that again before taking a freezing little hand into his own. Sam had listened. He was-is-such a good kid. Well behaved for Dean and always did what he asked when it really counted. And this is it now. Why won’t Sam look at him?!

He’s pushing Sam’s head to rest against Dean now, wrapping himself tightly around Sam, trying to shield him from the cold and the darkness and the monsters and everything: nothing will get past Dad, and if it did, I’ll kill it before it gets to you. Promise.

Nothing bad will happen to you while I’m around.

Promise.

He hears himself, the echo of that “nononononono” inside his head that finally broke free, a thousand screams from a thousand nightmares staggered together, and he’s not talking to Sammy anymore. He’s not talking to Bobby who’s back and puling at him. He doesn’t know who he is talking to but he knows he is willing to do anything, everything. Whatever. Point it out and he’ll do it. He’d go down on his knees and beg and plead because God No Not Sammy Not HIM!

Dean doesn’t always remember what happened next.  
There were fragments of senses, like the still warm heat of Sam’s cheek against his own, the click clack of their jacket zippers when he cradled Sam in his arms and rocked him back and forth, just like when you were little, Sammy. He’d been so scared, so scared that Sam would miss something, that Sammy would know that he is missing something. He’d stood witness at the love Mom had held for Sam. He was there when Sam was fed and hugged and loved and cared for and he couldn’t stand the thought of falling short, of not loving enough.  
He’d stood vigil by his baby brother’s crib, hummed lullabies and told bedtime stories, kissed Band-Aids over scrapes on tiny knees and elbows, ohhheed and ahhhed over preschool drawings and crafts.  
He’d went to every school plays and shows and football games and chaperoned every date until Dean seriously you don’t need to come and that still makes him chuckle because really it was adorable. He’d stood up to the man he’d vowed to never let down because Sam needed to meet kids his age, Sam needed hobbies besides research, Sam needed time and space of his own, Sam Sam Sam.  
He’d watched him grow up, Dean blinked and his little boy was out of the door and Dean had let him go.  
Please, he remembered thinking, the voice in his head now in sync with their rocking, please, what did I do, where did I go wrong, when did I fail.  
He remembered remembering, a Sam that was maybe just a little bit too big for it, crawls into bed and buries his head in Dean’s lap, floppy hair and tense shoulders and he didn’t say it but he’d wanted to be cuddled. Dean remembers pushing his fingers through Sam’s hair exactly like what he is doing now, staring down into a face that still had lingering traces of baby fat back then.  
He remembers trying so hard to pour all the love he had into the gaze he puts on Sammy when his brother isn’t looking, like somehow, if he’d loved him enough he’d be able to keep him safe from things that go bump in the night.

He’s doing it now. Through gut retching sobs and the trip to the abandoned cabin, feral cries whenever a hand tries to pry Sam from him. He’d done it through all seven stages of grieving in one second, before he’d driven up to a cross road and buried himself six feet under with a shallow hole in the ground. He rememberd that right after he’d stood up and tried then failed to not steal one last glance at Sam, lying there all quiet and cold, he’d tore himself away from the door and tucked a blanket over his baby brother. Then, in a one-last-ditch attempt, in the anguish and desperation of it all, he’d pressed a kiss to his forehead like he did when he first met Sammy, little bundle of joy of Mary and John that would grow up to be the lifelong heartache of Dean, and he’d thought what if fairy tales were real. 

What if fairy tales could be real, and Dean just needed to love enough for it to be real. 

Not even a year later, they’d learn that Fairy Tales can be real and Dean would feel the bitter resentment bubbling up in his throat as he thinks back to this moment, the taste of his own tears tarnishing the forehead of the sweet baby boy that Dean had raised, an agony easily outshining the looming shadows of hellfire.

It was before Chuck and Billie, Reapers and Angels. Before he’d learnt enough to know that death isn’t supposed to be a permanent door. Before he could do anything other than sitting on the wet ground with the blood of his brother cooling on his hand and his corpse getting cold in his arms. Until he could even spare a splinter of consciousness away from twenty-four years of his love and life dead and laid out right in front of him and think “I am changing this MYSELF”, he’d simply sat and talked and begged and bargained with all the pages of Supernatural that filled John Winchester’s journal, offering his life and soul up to things inhuman or holy, past and future, and no one had answered him.  
He’d been so grateful when the cross-road demon showed, to the point of reverent. He’d never tell it to Sam when he scorned him for the demon blood and the conspiring with Ruby but he knew, because of that one night when he’d do anything and be anyone, if only someone would answer and tell him what to do.

Years later someone does.

There were promises made, challenges laid down, the grand schemes of the universe all mapped out for him, Michael and Lucifer, God and monsters, spectacular and epic and they tell him that he is special and that Sam is special and they are heroes and then villains then heroes again. They’d carried marks of pain and shame and the weight of the whole wide world and Dean had gotten comfortable sitting at the same dinner table with an angel and sharing a beer with the King of Hell, and he punched the Devil and killed Death and had his entire family back for one evening and travelled to the past and the future and through worlds. And he watched a billion oceans of fate rise and fall when they tell him it all hangs in the balance, in him. 

And he’d think back to this night, a life time ago, when he’d held Sam as he got colder and colder. He’d remember the silence to his pleas. And he’d think to himself that nothing could take it away. There aren’t enough cosmic beings in the universe that could make him forget the stiff coldness of a corpse that is his little brother.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why this is important to me, but I really wanted to write something on how Sam's death could have affected Dean before he had a chance to see the bigger picture of things.


End file.
